The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.
In recent years, many existing sets of reading materials (e.g. books, magazines, articles, etc.) have been digitized and converted into electronic reading materials, and many new sets of reading materials have been made available in electronic form. Once in electronic form, these reading materials may be rendered to a user using a variety of rendering devices, such as desktop or laptop computers, notebook computers, tablet computers, smartphones, electronic reading devices (often referred to as eReaders), etc. A rendering device is typically capable of storing a large number of sets of electronic reading materials. As a result, a user can have access to a voluminous amount of reading materials without having to carry around a large number of physical books, magazines, papers, etc.
While having a large amount of reading materials easily available is advantageous, some users still enjoy various aspects of reading a physical set of reading material. Thus, to enhance reading enjoyment, some rendering devices provide functionalities that emulate the experience of reading a physical set of reading material. For example, some rendering devices with touch sensitive screens allow a user to go to a previous page or a next page by “swiping” a finger in one direction or the other across the screen to emulate the act of physically turning a page. Also, some rendering devices allow a user to place one or more electronic bookmarks in a set of reading material to emulate the act of placing a physical bookmark in a physical book. With bookmarking, a rendering device allows a user to designate or mark a particular portion of a set of reading material, just as a user would place a physical bookmark within the pages of a physical book. Once a bookmark is placed, the rendering device can use the bookmark, just as a user would use a physical bookmark, to quickly return to a particular portion of the reading material.
While some rendering devices may provide bookmarking capability, the manner in which this capability is implemented leaves much to be desired. For example, navigating from bookmark to bookmark is often not very convenient. Also, the display of bookmark information often obscures the content of the reading material so that the content and the bookmark information cannot be clearly viewed simultaneously. In addition, unlike with physical bookmarks where a user can look at the side of a book and see where various bookmarks are located within the book, the bookmark information provided by a rendering device usually is not presented in a manner that makes it easy for a user to determine where various bookmarks are located within the set of reading material relative to each other and relative to the overall content of the reading material. Because of these and other shortcomings, an improved bookmark presentation and navigation mechanism is needed for rendering devices.